Part 3 (1/2)

Actual work upon the _Conquest_ began early in 1839, though not at first with a degree of progress which was satisfactory to the investigator. By May, however, he had warmed to his work. He went back to his old rigorous regime, giving up again all social pleasures outside of his own house, and spending in his library at least five hours each day. His period of rest had done him good, and his eyesight was now better than at any time since it first became impaired. After three months of preliminary reading he was able to sketch out the plan of the entire work, and on October 14, 1839, he began the actual task of composition.

He found the introduction extremely difficult to write, for it dealt with the pre-historic period of Mexico, obscured as it was by the mist of myth and by the contradictory a.s.sertions of conflicting authorities.

”The whole of that part of the story,” wrote Prescott, ”is in twilight, and I fear I shall at least make only moons.h.i.+ne of it. I must hope that it will be good moons.h.i.+ne. It will go hard with me, however, but that I can fish something new out of my ocean of ma.n.u.scripts.” He had hoped to dispose of his introduction in a hundred pages, and to finish it in six months at the most. It actually extended to two hundred and fifty pages, and the writing of it took nearly eighteen months. One interruption occurred which he had not antic.i.p.ated. The success of _Ferdinand and Isabella_ had tempted an unscrupulous publisher to undertake an abridgment of that book. To protect his own interests Prescott decided to make an abridgment of his own, and thus to forestall the pirate. This work disheartened and depressed him, but he finished it with great celerity, only to find that the rival abridgment had been given up. A brief stay upon the sea-coast put him once more into working condition, and from that time he went on steadily with the _Conquest_, which he completed on August 2, 1843, not quite four years from the time when he began the actual composition. His weariness was lightened by the confidence which he felt in his own success. He knew that he had produced a masterpiece.

Naturally, he now had no trouble in securing a publisher and in making very advantageous terms for the production of the book. It was brought out by the Harpers of New York, though, as before, Prescott himself owned the plates. His contract allowed the Harpers to publish five thousand copies for which they paid the author $7500, with the right of publis.h.i.+ng more copies if required within the period of one year and on the same general terms. An English edition was simultaneously brought out by Bentley in London, who purchased the foreign copyright for 650.

Three Spanish translations appeared soon after, one in Madrid in 1847 and two in Mexico in 1844. A French translation was published in Paris, by Didot in 1846, and a German translation, in Leipzig, by Brockhaus in 1845. A French reprint in English appeared in Paris soon after Bentley placed the London edition upon the market.

No historical work written by an American has ever been received with so much enthusiasm alike in America and in Europe. Within a month, four thousand copies were disposed of by the Harpers, and at the end of four months the original edition of five thousand had been sold. The reviewers were unanimous in its praise, and an avalanche of congratulatory letters descended upon Prescott from admirers, known and unknown, all over the civilised world. _Ferdinand and Isabella_ had brought him reputation; the _Conquest of Mexico_ made him famous.

Honours came to him unsought. He was elected a member of the French Inst.i.tute[13] and of the Royal Society of Berlin. He had already accepted members.h.i.+p in the Royal Spanish Academy of History at Madrid and in the Royal Academy of Sciences in Naples. Harvard conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Perhaps nothing pleased him more, however, than a personal letter from Humboldt, for whom Prescott had long entertained a feeling of deep admiration. This eminent scholar, at that time the President of the Royal Society of Berlin, in which body Niebuhr, Von Raumer, and Ranke had been enrolled, wrote in French a letter of which the following sentences form a part:--

”My satisfaction has been very great in studying line by line your excellent work. One judges with severity, with perhaps a bias towards injustice, when he has had a vivid impression of the places, and when the study of ancient history with which I have been occupied from preference has been pursued on the very soil itself where a part of these great events took place. My severity, sir, has been disarmed by the reading of your _Conquest of Mexico_.

You paint with success because you have _seen_ with the eyes of the spirit and of the inner sense. It is a pleasure to me, a citizen of Mexico, to have lived long enough to read you and to speak to you of my appreciation of the kind expressions with which you have done honour to my name.... Were I not wholly occupied with my _Cosmos_, which I have had the imprudence to print, I should have wished to translate your work into the language of my own country.”

While gathering the materials for the _Conquest of Mexico_, Prescott had felt his way toward still another subject which his Mexican researches naturally suggested. This was the conquest of Peru. Much of his Mexican reading had borne directly upon this other theme, so that the labour of preparation was greatly lightened. Moreover, by this time, he had acquired both an accurate knowledge of sources and also great facility in composition. Hence the only serious work which was necessary for him to undertake as a preliminary to composition was the study of Peruvian antiquities. This occupied him eight months, and proved to be far more troublesome to him and much less satisfactory than the like investigation which he had made with reference to the Aztecs. However, after the work had been commenced it proceeded rapidly,--so rapidly, in fact, as to cause him a feeling of half-comical dismay. He began to write on the 12th of August, 1844, and completed his task on November 7, 1846. During its progress he made a note that he had written two chapters, amounting in all to fifty-one printed pages, in four days, adding the comment, ”I never did up so much yarn in the same time. At this rate Peru will not hold out six months. Can I finish it in a year?

Alas for the reader!” No doubt he might have finished it in a year had certain interruptions not occurred. The first of these was the death of his father, which took place on December 8th, not long after he had begun the book. His brother Edward had died shortly before, and this double affliction affected very deeply so sensitive a nature as Prescott's. To his father, indeed, he owed more than he could ever express. The two had been true comrades, and had treated one another with an affectionate familiarity which, between father and son, was as rare in those days as it was beautiful. Judge Prescott's generosity had made it possible for the younger man to break through all the barriers of physical infirmity, and not only to win fame but also the happiness which comes from a creative activity. They understood each other very well, and in many points they were much alike both in their friendliness and in their habits of reserve. One little circ.u.mstance ill.u.s.trates this likeness rather curiously. Fond as both of them were of their fellows, and cordial as they both were to all their friends, each wished at times to be alone, and these times were when they walked or rode. Therefore, each morning when the two men mounted their horses or when they set out for a walk, they always parted company when they reached the road, one turning to the right and the other to the left by a tacit understanding, and neither ever thought of accompanying the other. Sometimes a friend not knowing of this trait would join one of them to share the ride or walk. Whenever such a thing as this took place, that particular route would be abandoned the next day and another and a lonelier one selected.

A further interruption came from the purchase of a house on Beacon Street and the necessity of arranging to leave the old mansion on Bedford Street. The new house was a fine one, overlooking the Mall and the Common; and the new library, which was planned especially for Prescott's needs, was much more commodious than the old one. But the confusion and feeling of unsettlement attendant on the change distracted Prescott more than it would have done a man less habituated to a self-imposed routine. ”A month of pandemonium,” he wrote; ”an unfurnished house coming to order; a library without books; books without time to open them.” It took Prescott quite a while to resume his methodical habits. His old-time indolence settled down upon him, and it was some time before his literary momentum had been recovered. Moreover, he presumed upon the fairly satisfactory condition of his eye and used it to excess. The result was that his optic nerve was badly over-taxed, ”probably by ma.n.u.script digging,” as he said. The strain was one from which his eye never fully recovered; and from this time until the completion of the _Peru_, he could use it in reading for only a few minutes every day, sometimes perhaps for ten or fifteen, but never for more than thirty. As this is the last time that we shall mention this subject, it may be said that for all purposes of literary work Prescott was soon afterward reduced to the position of one who was actually blind. What had before been a merely stationary dimness of vision became a slowly progressive decay of sight, or, to express it in medical language, amblyopia had pa.s.sed into amaurosis. He followed rigorously his oculist's injunctions, but in the end he had to face the facts unflinchingly; and a little later he recorded his determination to give up all use of the eye for the future in his studies, and to be contented with preserving it for the ordinary purposes of life. The necessity disheartened him. ”It takes the strength out of me,” he said.

Nevertheless, neither this nor the fact that his general health was most unsatisfactory, caused him to abandon work. He could not bring himself to use what he called ”the coward's word, 'impossible.'” And so, after a little time, he went on as before, studying ”by ear-work,” and turning off upon his noctograph from ten to fifteen pages every day. He continued also his outdoor exercise, and, in fact, one of the best-written chapters of the _Conquest of Peru_--the last one--was composed while galloping through the woods at Pepperell. On November 7, 1846, the _Conquest of Peru_ was finished. Like the preceding history, it was published by the Harper Brothers, who agreed to pay the author one dollar per copy and to bring out a first edition of seventy-five hundred copies. This, Mr. Ticknor says, was a more liberal arrangement than had ever before been made with an historical writer in the United States. The English copyright was purchased by Bentley for 800.

Prescott's main anxiety about the reception which would be given to the _Conquest of Peru_ was based upon his doubts as to its literary style.

Neither of his other books had been written so rapidly, and he feared that he might incur the charge of over-fluency or even slovenliness.

Yet, as a matter of fact, the chorus of praise which greeted the two volumes was as loud and as spontaneous as it had been over his _Mexico_.

Prescott now stood so firmly on his feet as to look at much of this praise in a somewhat humorous light. The approbation of the _Edinburgh Review_ no longer seemed to him the _summa laus_, though he valued it more highly than the praise given him by American periodicals, of which he wrote very shrewdly:

”I don't know how it is, but our critics, though not pedantic, have not the businesslike air, or the air of the man of the world, which gives manliness and significance to criticism. Their satire, when they attempt it--which cannot be often laid to their door--has neither the fine edge of the _Edinburgh_ nor the sledgehammer stroke of the _Quarterly_. They twaddle out their humour as if they were afraid of its biting too hard, or else they deliver axioms with a sort of smart, dapper conceit, like a little parson laying down the law to his little people.... In England there is a far greater number of men highly cultivated--whether in public life or men of leisure--whose intimacy with affairs and with society, as well as books, affords supplies of a high order for periodical criticism.”

As for newspaper eulogies, he remarked: ”I am certainly the cause of some wit and much folly in others.” His latest work, however, brought him two new honours which he greatly prized,--an election to the Royal English Society of Literature, and the other an invitation to members.h.i.+p in the Royal Society of Antiquaries. The former honour he shared with only one of his fellow-countrymen, Bancroft; the latter had heretofore been given to no American.

Prescott now indulged himself with a long period of ”literary loafing,”

as he described it, broken in upon only by the preparation of a short memoir of John Pickering, the antiquarian and scholar, who had been one of Prescott's most devoted friends. This memoir was undertaken at the request of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society. It has no general interest now, but is worthy of note as having been the only one of Prescott's works which he dictated to an amanuensis. Prescott had an aversion to writing in this way, although he had before him the example of his blind contemporary, Thierry. Like Alphonse Daudet, he seems to have felt that what is written by hand comes more directly from the author's inner self, and that it represents most truly the tints and half-tones of his personality. That this is only a fancy is seen clearly enough from several striking instances which the history of literature records. Scott dictated to Lockhart the whole of _The Bride of Lammermoor_. Thackeray dictated a good part of _The Newcomes_ and all of _Pendennis_, and even _Henry Esmond_, of which the artificial style might well have made dictation difficult. Prescott, however, had his own opinion on the subject, and, with the single exception which has just been cited, he used his noctograph for composition down to the very end, dictating only his correspondence to his secretary.

His days of ”literary loafing” allowed him to enjoy the pleasures of friends.h.i.+p which during his periods of work were necessarily, to some extent, intermitted. No man ever had more cordially devoted friends than Prescott. He knew every one who was worth knowing, and every one was attracted by the spontaneous charm of his manner and his invincible kindliness. Never was a man more free from petulance or peevishness, though these defects at times might well have been excused in one whose health was such as his. He presented the anomaly of a dyspeptic who was still an optimist and always amiable. Mr. John Foster Kirk, who was one of his secretaries, wrote of him:--

”No annoyance, great or small, the most painful illness or the most intolerable bore, could disturb his equanimity, or render him in the least degree sullen, or fretful, or discourteous. He was always gay, good-humoured, and manly. He carried his kindness of disposition not only into his public, but into his private, writings. In the hundreds of letters, many of them of the most confidential character, treating freely of other authors and of a great variety of persons, which I wrote at his dictation, not a single unkind or harsh or sneering expression occurs. He was totally free from the jealousy and envy so common among authors, and was always eager in conversation, as in print, to point out the merits of the great contemporary historians whom many men in his position would have looked upon as rivals to be dreaded if not detested.”

Bancroft the historian has added his testimony to the greatness of Prescott's personal charm.

”His countenance had something that brought to mind the 'beautiful disdain' that hovers on that of the Apollo. But while he was high-spirited, he was tender and gentle and humane. His voice was like music and one could never hear enough of it. His cheerfulness reached and animated all about him. He could indulge in playfulness and could also speak earnestly and profoundly; but he knew not how to be ungracious or pedantic.”

No wonder then that his friends were legion, comprising men and women of the most different types. Dry and formal scholars such as Jared Sparks; men of the world like Lord Carlisle; nice old ladies like Maria Edgeworth and the octogenarian Miss Berry, Walpole's friend; women of fas.h.i.+on like Lady Lyell, Lady Mary Labouchere, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland; Spanish hidalgos like Calderon de la Barca; smooth politicians like Caleb Cus.h.i.+ng; and intense partisans like Charles Sumner,--all agreed in their affectionate admiration for Prescott. His friends.h.i.+p with Sumner was indeed quite notable, since no men could have been more utterly unlike. Sumner was devoid of the slightest gleam of humour, and his self-consciousness was extreme; yet Prescott sometimes poked fun at him with impunity. Thus, writing to Sumner about his Phi Beta Kappa oration (delivered in 1846), he said:--

”Last year you condemned wars _in toto_, making no exception even for the wars of freedom. This year you condemn the _representation_ of war, whether by the pencil or the pen. Marathon, Salamis, Bunker Hill, the retreat from Moscow, Waterloo, great and small, are _all_ to be blotted from memory equally with my own wild skirmishes of barbarians and banditti. Lord deliver us! Where will you bring up?

If the stories are not to be painted or written, such records of them as have been heedlessly made should by the same rule be destroyed. I laugh; but I fear you will make the judicious grieve.

But fare thee well, dear Sumner. Whether thou deportest thyself _sana mente_ or _mente insana_, believe me always truly yours.”

But Sumner's arrogance and egoism were always in abeyance where Prescott was concerned, and even their lack of political sympathy never marred the warmth of their intercourse. Prescott, in fact, cared very little about contemporary politics. He had inherited from his fighting ancestors a st.u.r.dy patriotism, but his loyalty was given to the whole country and not to any faction or party. His cast of mind was essentially conservative, and down to 1856 he would no doubt have called himself an old-line Whig. He was always, however, averse to political discussion which, indeed, led easily to personalities that were offensive not only to Prescott's taste but to his amiable disposition.

His friend Parsons said of him: ”He never sought or originated political conversation, but he would not decline contributing his share to it; and the contribution he made was always of good sense, of moderation, and of forbearance.”

Prescott's detachment with regard to politics was partly due, no doubt, to the nature of the life he led, which kept him isolated from the bustle of the world about him; yet it was probably due still more to a lack of combativeness in his nature. Motley once said of him that he lacked the capacity for _saeva indignatio_. This remark was called forth by Prescott's tolerant view of Philip II. of Spain, who was in Motley's eyes little better than a monster. One might fairly, however, give it a wider application, and we must regard it as an undeniable defect in Prescott that nothing external could strike fire from him. Thus, when his intimate friend Sumner had been brutally a.s.saulted in the Senate chamber by the Southern bully, Brooks, Prescott wrote to him: ”You have escaped the crown of martyrdom by a narrow chance, and have got all the honours, which are almost as dangerous to one's head as a gutta-percha cane.” There is a tameness about this sentence which one would scarcely notice had Sumner merely received a black eye, but which offends one's sense of fitness when we recall that Sumner had been beaten into insensibility, and that he never fully recovered from the attack. Again, when, in 1854, Boston was all ablaze over the capture of a fugitive slave, when the city was filled with troops and muskets were levelled at the populace, Prescott merely remarked to an English correspondent: ”It is a disagreeable business.” To be sure, he also said, ”It made my blood boil,” but the general tone of the letter shows that his blood must have boiled at a very low temperature. Nevertheless, he seems to have been somewhat stirred by the exciting struggle which took place over Kansas between the Free-Soil forces and the partisans of slavery. Hence, in 1856, he cast his vote for Fremont, the first Republican candidate for the Presidency. But, as a rule, the politics of the sixteenth century were his most serious concern, and in the very year in which he voted for Fremont, he wrote: ”I belong to the sixteenth century and am quite out of place when I sleep elsewhere.” It was this feeling which led him to decline a tempting invitation to write a history of the modern conquest of Mexico by the American army under General Scott. The offer came to him in 1847; and both the theme itself and the terms in which the offer was made might well have attracted one whose face was set less resolutely toward the historic past. His comment was characteristic. ”I had rather not meddle with heroes who have not been under ground two centuries at least.” It is interesting to note that the subject which Prescott then rejected has never been adequately treated; and that the brilliant exploits of Scott in Mexico still await a worthy chronicler.